American musical theater has changed quite significantly over the past few decades. The popular shows of Broadway in the years following World War TI involved similar music and dance numbers of a particular style and choreography. Some people consider the 1950s as the Golden Age of Broadway when shows like Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, Kismet, and The King and I dominated the stage. These sophisticated, high-budget productions featured talented actors, singers, and dancers, but the dance choreography centered around one particular style for each entire show—ballroom, jazz, or some type of character dancing, such as country, folk, or Celtic dancing. Dancers usually engaged in a single, traditional dance style throughout an entire performance.
Bob Fosse, Broadway's great jazz dance innovator, appeared on the scene in the late 50s and ushered in a transition to high-energy, intense, and demanding dance choreography. Dancers required great stamina and the ability to combine precise hand gestures, rapid kicks, forceful foot action, and sinuous body movements. Fosse's style is best exemplified in the Broadway musical Chicago (1975) and the film, Cabaret (1972). Rock musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair, Grease, and The Wiz appeared around the same time, bringing new energy and innovative dance routines to American musicals. Fosse's twist on traditional jazz dancing and the influence of rock music brought high-energy routines to Broadway musicals, but shows still regularly followed a consistent dance style. Performers in these shows needed to perform only a single dance style (though often with some variation) and required only basic dance shoes of an appropriate type.
Since the late 1980s, however, Broadway musicals have become far more elaborate and complicated. Technological innovations in set design, lighting, and costuming have allowed stunningly expansive productions like The Lion King, Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, and Wicked. Innovation swept through dance moves and choreography as well, leading to multiple different dance styles being incorporated into the same show, or even a single number within a show. Productions like Stomp, Rent, and Fosse fused and mixed jazz, character, tap, ballroom, ballet, African, and modern dance. Obviously, dancers in these shows would benefit from a dance shoe that offered the mechanical and aesthetic flexibility necessary to perform such a complicated set of routines.
Today's musicals demand dancers who can shift among many different dance styles, often within a matter of minutes or seconds, and dancers demand shoes that facilitate and enhance their abilities to do so. Dancers must leap and jump across the stage, glide effortlessly with partners, and sweep their legs broadly in curving arcs. They must straighten their legs and point their feet in ballet-like movements one moment, and switch to kicks, stomps, and turns on the next beat of music. All of these intricate choreographies incorporate isolated smooth, controlled, pliable manipulations of the foot and toes rooted in jazz and ballet with highly energetic movements from character dancing, such as stomping, kicking, gliding, jumping, turning, or scuffing. Elements of tap dancing (with or without actual tap plates on the shoes) are often incorporated as well.
Each dance style requires a shoe capable of facilitating and enhancing the movements of that style. For example, character dancing requires high-heel shoes with strength, rigidity, and support sufficient for performing energetic dance movements (kicking, jumping, stomping, etc.). Character shoes limit flexibility in favor of reinforcing the dancer's feet. To this end, character dance shoes commonly have hard leather soles and firm, strong shoe uppers. They have traditional high heels, which are rigid and typically more than 11/2″ high and relatively low forefoot sections. The heels usually taper from a broader area at the top-end, corresponding to the heel, to a reduced area at the bottom-side for ground contact. Accordingly, because of the heel-to-toe slope, the wearer's arch is considerably raised it and must be supported when weight bearing. In this regard, character shoes typically have rigid shanks spanning across their midfoot portion under the arch. Problematically, this form of constructions does not adequately afford the flexibility needed for jazz dance moves, particularly plantar flexion for pointing—a rigid midfoot portion impedes contraction of the arch, which is key to the pointing aesthetic.
In contrast, traditional jazz dancing shoes sacrifice reinforcing support in favor of flexibility and pliability. Traditional jazz dance shoes often are similar to ballet shoes or slippers, with soft soles and pliable shoe uppers that do not overly restrict the foot, allow a broader range of foot movement. They typically have a flat heel, which, relative to the forefoot of the shoe, result in a shoe that has little or no slope or elevated arch. The heels also provide a relative broad area of ground contact.
Accordingly, problems arise when dancers are forced to choose one style of shoe—either a character or a jazz shoe—for musicals or dance numbers incorporating such a blend of dance styles or movements. Dancers cannot change shoes in the middle of a number to accommodate a change in style, and they often have very little time for costume changes between dance numbers in a single performance.
In an attempt to address the foregoing problems, U.S. Pat. No. 5,996,251 describes a combination jazz dancing and character/tap dancing shoe and U.S. Pat. No. 6,745,498. However, the metal or hard leather shanks in these shoes do not offer the wearer optimum flexibility in the area of the shoe underneath the arch of the foot. In fact, the only area of moderate or substantial flexibility in the sole of a shoe described in the '498 patent is a small area in the rear of the front portion of the shoe between the rigid shank 30 and the support 70.
In view of the forgoing, there is an ever-present need for improved dance footwear that better balances the needs for support and flexibility in the region under the arch of the foot and elsewhere. Additionally, there is an ever-present need for better constructed dance footwear, including stronger construction of high heel portions, which historically have been prone to breakage.